Pentagon papers leak suspect named as Air National Guardsman and online leader
The chief suspect behind the leaking of highly classified military documents on the Ukraine war dubbed 'the Pentagon leaks' has been revealed to be a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman.
Investigators believe that guardsman Jack Teixeira, who specialises in intelligence, led an online gaming chat group named 'Thug Shaker Central' where the documents were posted.
FBI agents swarmed Teixeira’s Massachusetts home and heavily armed tactical agents took a man wearing a T-shirt and shorts into custody.
Law enforcement officials roped off the street near the home.
The Discord channels where one cache of documents was posted on a group focused on the computer game Minecraft and a fandom for a Filipino YouTube celebrity.
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Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira getting arrested (WBZ)The leaked documents then spread to other sites such as imageboard 4Chan before filtering onto Telegram and Twitter.
The Washington Post reported Teixeira was known to his Discord channel members by the handle “jackthedripper" and with the nickname "OG".
According to the Washington Post, OG told other members these were documents he had brought home from a “military base”.
One of Teixeira's friends from the group told the New York Times: “This guy was a Christian, anti-war, just wanted to inform some of his friends about what’s going on.
Some of the documents leaked (Telegram)“We have some people in our group who are in Ukraine. We like fighting games, we like war games.”
In a video seen by Washington Post, a man identified as OG is seen at a shooting range with a large rifle making racial slurs on camera.
The Times reported that Teixeira "oversaw a private online group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games."
The Pentagon Press Secretary described the leak was "a deliberate criminal act."
Heavily armed officers swarmed the Massachusetts home (CBS BOSTON)Air Force confirmed Teixeira's duty title was "Cyber Transport Systems Journeyman," and joined the Air National guard in September 2019.
The emergence of Teixeira as the apparent primary suspect will raise questions about how the highest-profile intelligence leak in years could have been caused by such a young, low-ranking service member.
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The Biden administration has scrambled for days to contain the fallout from the leaked information, which has publicised potential vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s air defence capabilities.
Screen shows a news program reporting on the leaked Pentagon documents at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea (Ahn Young-joon/AP/REX/Shutterstock)It also exposed private assessments by allies on an array of intelligence matters.
The National Guard did not confirm Teixeira’s identity but said in a statement that, “We are aware of the investigation into the alleged role a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman may have played in the recent leak of highly-classified documents.”
Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said: “We have rules in place. Each of us signs a nondisclosure agreement. This is a criminal act, a willful violation of those.”
Teixeira was taken in by the FBI (AP)The Biden administration has been working to assess the diplomatic and national security consequences of the leaked documents since they were first reported last week.
A top Pentagon spokesman told reporters earlier this week that the disclosures present a “very serious risk to national security,” and the Justice Department opened an investigation to identify the person responsible.
“We’re getting close,” President Joe Biden told reporters in Ireland on Thursday.
He said that though he was concerned that sensitive government documents had been disclosed, “there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.”
The leaked papers have revealed a number of Pentagon secrets (AFP via Getty Images)The Justice Department declined to comment Thursday.
It’s possible the leak may have started on a site called Discord, a social media platform popular with people playing online games. The Discord site hosts real-time voice, video and text chats for groups and describes itself as a place “where you can belong to a school club, a gaming group, or a worldwide art community.”
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